


as if it were the last time

by winkyjinki



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Adult Losers Club (IT), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Eddie Kaspbrak Loves Richie Tozier, First Kiss, Internalized Homophobia, Love Confessions, M/M, POV Eddie Kaspbrak, Pennywise is His Own Warning (IT), Richie Tozier Loves Eddie Kaspbrak
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-12
Updated: 2020-04-12
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:41:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23618452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winkyjinki/pseuds/winkyjinki
Summary: Eddie Kaspbrak was forty years old when he found Richie caught in the deadlights and found himself completely unable to move.He had no idea what to do or who to call to for help, but he knew he couldn’t just keep standing there doing nothing when Richie was in trouble again. Memories of Richie running to Eddie’s aid and calling out to him to keep him safe crowded Eddie’s mind. He remembered Richie always being the first one at his side when he was scared, remembered Richie trying to distract him from the horror of being attack by Pennywise and the pain of having broken his arm as yelled, “Eddie, look at me. Look at me!” He scrambled the contents of his brain to come up with a way to get Richie out of the state he was stuck in.It was his turn to keep Richie safe.Clutching the spear in his hand, he shut his eyes tightly and let out a shaky breath. He knew what he had to do.“This…kills monsters. If you believe it does.”And because it was Richie, he had to believe that it did.So he threw it.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 10
Kudos: 66





	as if it were the last time

**Author's Note:**

> Don't mind me, I'm just slowly fixing up the It Chapter Two script to my liking– With every day that passes, I get more and more upset that we didn't get a reddie confession before eddie dies so.....this was born out of pure self-indulgence.
> 
> Hope you enjoy, and I thank my friends for giving me the starter prompt that lead me to write this!

Eddie Kaspbrak was forty years old when he returned to his hometown for friends he didn’t even know he had.

Within his first moments of arriving at the Orient, he was immediately met with the sight of strangers already in the dining room, strangers walking in after he’d arrived—strangers for the first brief moment he’d first laid eyes on them up until the moment he’d forgotten his entire childhood. Until memories of emptying out his school backpack in the trash with Bill every year and riding in the basket of Mike’s bicycle came flooding back into his head like they never should have been gone in the first place.

Before he’d stepped into the Orient, the only things Eddie was completely sure of were that he somehow knew Mike Hanlon and that, although he only vaguely recalled the importance of the promise he made before he’d even fully hit puberty, he absolutely had to keep it. It all felt like he was trying to put together a puzzle with absolutely no knowledge of what it was supposed to look like when it’s done; but after seeing Bill and Mike, the pieces started coming together on their own.

As he was just beginning to adjust to the newly recovered memories, he heard behind him the sound of a gong, loud enough to knock them all back out through his ears. He turned, startled, and was met by the sight of Bev—still viciously redheaded—, Ben—thinner, but still kind-eyed—, and Richie.

Oh, Richie.

Unlike with the rest of the Losers, when Eddie recognized Richie’s face, there were more than just memories that came crashing back to him. There were also feelings of insecurity and self-frustration. There were wants and desires that he hadn’t felt in a long, long time and attraction and an excited fear that came with remembering Richie Tozier.

Remembering Richie Tozier came with remembering the all of the weirdness in his stomach whenever he stood too close to him or when their skin brushed together—something that should be so minor and unnoticeable, but it made Eddie’s stomach do cartwheels and somersaults. It came with remembering the exact moment he realized those feelings are how Bill or Ben must have felt whenever Bev smiled at either of them. It came with the sudden guilt he felt immediately after he caught himself relishing in the pride of being the focus of Richie’s attention for even a minute and all of the nights he’d cried at his bedside, begging God to fix him because he didn’t want to feel the way he did about one of his best friends. About a boy.

Before Eddie set foot into that restaurant, the only things he was sure of were that he knew Mike Hanlon and that he had to keep his promise. Less than ten minutes into the reunion dinner, he felt like he knew absolutely too much, like the puzzle he was supposed to be putting together was only five hundred pieces, but somehow he found he had a thousand.

Eddie Kaspbrak was forty years old when he experienced love at first sight with a man he’d known his whole life.

As the night progressed, he recovered memories of being terrified of being too touchy with Richie, but loving the rush of trying to find out just what level of touchy he could get away with. He remembered constantly bickering with Richie and loving that neither of them ever took it to heart or stayed upset for very long if they did. Listening to Richie poke at his temper and bickering back and forth with him, it was like no time had even passed at all. 

Eddie even found that if he drank enough, he went right back to trying to see how far he could push those imaginary boundaries. He immediately tried to find an excuse to touch him—to hold his hand—, challenging Richie to an arm-wrestling match after trying long and hard to guess when his arms got so big. 

Once he returned to his room in the townhouse, he stayed awake in bed after another puzzle piece clicked into its place. The day he came across a carving on the kissing bridge that filled him with hope. Hope that it was more than he would usually assume it was, hope that the initials belonged to him and Richie, hope that maybe it would be okay. Maybe it was okay that he liked Richie.

Because if he didn’t carve it and his was part of that carving, then that meant maybe Richie put it there. Maybe Richie felt the same.

He never dared to act on that feeling, though, in fear that Richie would laugh at him, that he would tell the others and they would all think he was dirty. That he would be left alone with only his mother, who he soon would realize was part of the reason he was so fucked up now.

So he held onto that for a time where he was braver.

As he drifted to sleep that night, he was able to recall all the times he found refuge in the mental image of the carving whenever he was worn down by warnings from his mother or judgement from his own cruel thoughts. He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t using that image to cope with all the feelings he’d forgotten he’d even had.

Eddie was forty years old when he faced one of his biggest fears, following the rest of the Losers into the sewers straight to Pennywise.

The goal was to kill It for real this time, but he’d frozen up at every encounter with It since stepping into the abandoned well house. When Spider Stan attacked Richie, when Bev was nearly drowned to death in the sewers—both times he’d stayed back, frozen in terror even though he wanted to desperately to help.

He’d insisted that he wasn’t brave enough to continue, that he’d nearly let Richie die, that he couldn’t do it. Richie stayed with him to talk him down, to give him a heart to heart when God knows he could have told Eddie to man up and help them kill a clown. Instead, Richie told him that he was so brave, braver than he thought.

So brave, yet he ignored the way he felt when Richie looked at him the way he did, ignored the way the tenderness in his voice made him so dizzy.

After Richie had gotten through to him, Bev stepped in front of Eddie, offering the spear that she picked up from the front yard of the Neibolt house. She insisted that it would help him.

“Take this,” she said, holding it out for him to take. “It kills monsters.”

“Does it?” He’d asked. She gave him a nod, almost as if she was sharing some of her courage with him.

“If you believe it does.”

Eddie nodded along and gathered the last bit of courage he needed to be able to follow his friends down further, below the sewers.

Eddie Kaspbrak was forty years old when he found Richie caught in the deadlights and found himself completely unable to move.

He had no idea what to do or who to call to for help, but he knew he couldn’t just keep standing there doing nothing when Richie was in trouble _again_. Memories of Richie running to Eddie’s aid and calling out to him to keep him safe crowded Eddie’s mind. He remembered Richie always being the first one at his side when he was scared, remembered Richie trying to distract him from the horror of being attack by Pennywise and the pain of having broken his arm as yelled, _“Eddie, look at me. Look at me!”_ He scrambled the contents of his brain to come up with a way to get Richie out of the state he was stuck in.

It was his turn to keep Richie safe.

Clutching the spear in his hand, he shut his eyes tightly and let out a shaky breath. He knew what he had to do.

_“This…kills monsters. If you believe it does.”_

And because it was Richie, he had to believe that it did.

So he threw it.

For just a couple of moments, it felt like the world was moving in slow motion as Eddie watched the spear soar through the air, jamming itself down Its throat and causing It to stumble backward to Its death. Richie came falling down to the ground, shaken.

Eddie couldn’t believe it. He did it. He saved Richie and he killed It.

“I think I killed It,” he’d announced proudly, hovering over Richie as if he’d been doing it for years. He kept looking back and double, triple-taking to make sure he’d actually gotten it. He was so, so ecstatic that this nightmare was finally over.

He came to find moments later that he was so desperately wrong.

“I did! I think I killed It for real—“

Eddie Kaspbrak was forty years old when he did probably the bravest thing he’d ever done in his life without even realizing it at the moment. He found that he’d exchanged Richie’s life for his own.

Even after Richie and the others ran to his side, he knew already from the severity of his wound (being impaled is pretty much a one-way ticket to the afterlife, he knew that much) that they would be walking out of here without him. Still, he appreciated the time they took to be there for him when he knew the clock was still ticking for the rest of them. They still had to find a way to kill It.

He thought about the leper in the pharmacy’s basement and how he almost killed it, how he made it small. Once Eddie brought it up, it gave the Losers just enough leverage to figure out another plan to defeat It. They then took off to resume the battle they’d paused, but Richie opted to stay behind with him.

“Rich,” Eddie rasps, barely able to get so much as a sound out of his throat. It takes everything in him to even begin to form proper words. Still, he persists. “Rich, I gotta—,” he coughs, “I gotta tell you something.”

Richie shushes him promptly, keeping a firm hold on his jacket lying atop of Eddie’s wound. All that’s doing is keeping him from bleeding out any faster that he already is. “Eds, you have to save your energy. We still gotta get you outta here.”

“Richie…” Eddie says, “I’m not getting out of here.”

“No, you _are_ —we just—they’re gonna—,” Richie stammers an argument, the pace of his breathing picking up to bite back the urge to start crying. A tactic that Eddie knows all too well. Richie exhales, trying his very best to keep himself together. “We’re getting you out.”

Eddie places his own hand over Richie’s.

“Richie,” he repeats, and it causes Richie to whimper in response. It breaks his heart to hear. Eddie can feel the muscles in Richie’s hand become less tense when he holds it. He hopes that Richie knows that he doesn’t have to be brave anymore. “I’m not getting out of here.”

A beat passes before the words finally get through to Richie, before he begins to break. Eddie watches somberly as his face contorts in sorrow, pain, regret. Richie shakes his head in disbelief as he sobs, and Eddie breathes shallow breaths as he forces himself to look up at the ceiling for a moment to gather any strength he has left. He’s not done yet.

Richie’s sobs ring in his ears accompanied by countless _‘No’s_ before Eddie speaks up again. “Listen…If I don’t say this now, I’m never going to.”

He held onto this for a time where he was braver. And he figures this is him at his bravest.

Eddie takes his eyes off of the ceiling, looking back to Richie at the same moment that Richie lifts his head up. He sucks in another shaky, shallow breath, summoning all the courage he requires.

“I have been in love with you since we were sixteen,” he confesses, laughing a little bit at himself even though it hurts his lungs to laugh. He feels like ‘in love’ is definitely an understatement at this point in time. “At least, I realized I was in love with you when I was sixteen. So maybe it’s been longer than that, I—“

“Thirteen,” Richie interrupts with a sniffle, wiping his tears away before they are replaced with new ones. Eddie weakly raises a confused eyebrow.

“What?” He asks in response. A good portion of his childhood may still be very fuzzy, but he’s pretty confident he can clearly recall just how old he was when he had his Very First Existential Crisis. Richie exhales an airy chuckle.

“Thirteen—I was thirteen when I realized I was in love with you,” he clarifies, melancholic smile painted onto his face. “So I’ve got you beat”

At this, Eddie lets out another small laugh, trying to ignore the way his chest squeezes in pain when he does. He appreciates Richie’s way of lightening the mood, even when he’s so close to losing the love of his life. Even when they’re so close to losing each other after they’ve just found each other again after all these years. It’s not fair.

Eddie still does not move the hand he’s placed on top of Richie’s; this is as close to holding his hand as he’s ever going to get. Instead, he gives it a reassuring squeeze.

“It’s going to be okay,” he tells Richie just barely above a whisper, although he is unable to convince even himself. He doesn’t want to go, doesn’t want to leave Richie and his friends behind, but he knows what comes next for him now.

And he doesn’t know if maybe this is all a really bad dream that just got better because Richie kisses him.

He leans forward and mashes his lips onto Eddie’s with an eagerness that must be compensating for all of the years of repressing his impulses. It’s as if he’s trying to make up for every time either of them thought to say or do something and _didn’t_.

Richie kisses him even though he’s drooling blood, even though he’s been swimming in millions of gallons of Derry pee, even though he waited until the absolute last and worst possible moment to finally say how he felt. None of it matters because Richie’s kissing him now and he doesn’t want him to stop because this is all he’s ever wanted. If only he had more time.

When their lips part, Eddie can only look at Richie with more sorrow in his eyes than he’s ever felt in his short life. With the last bit of energy he can gather up, he reaches his free hand up to caress Richie’s face the way he’s always wanted to—his cheek is rough with stubble, and he likes it that way.

“Go,” Eddie says with his final breath. 

Richie is the last thing he sees before he loses consciousness.

Eddie Kaspbrak was forty years old when he died saving Richie Tozier’s life.

**Author's Note:**

> Wow! Thank you for reading!
> 
> Hope you enjoyed this as much as I loved writing it. Feel free to visit my [tumblr](https://winkyjinki.tumblr.com/) to talk or just hang out and see my posts :)


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